Leaders within their industries, Rebecca Capparelli of USA TODAY Co. and Deb Williams of Federated Media, shared how they built multi-million dollar promotions businesses through pinpointing the correct promotion programs and creating robust go-to-market strategies.

The Opportunity

Rebecca and Deb shared just how large the opportunity is with promotions.

• ROI and Measurable Results – Promotions provide exactly what advertisers are looking for that may not come from traditional advertising. Promotions provide leads, list growth, and zero-party data that leads to activation and ROI for advertisers.
• $363BB Revenue Opportunity – From our friends at Borrell Associates, the promotions industry totals $363BB – which means if you aren’t running promotions you are missing out on this huge opportunity!
• Promotions turn Audience into Activations – Promotions turn YOUR audience into activation for your advertiser, whether that’s they become a lead or an opt-in. Your audience is providing value to your advertisers.

The Solution

Now that we know the opportunity, how do we leverage that opportunity with promotions? Rebecca and Deb provided some amazing ideas.

Always-On Promotions

Always-On promotions are promotions that are continuously running and brining in revenue for you and value (like leads and opt-ins) for the advertiser. Think Athlete of the Week, Amazing Teachers, etc.

Both Deb and Rebecca have utilized always-on promotions to move the revenue needle for their organizations.

Deb walked through their City of Fort Wayne Quiz Bundle that utilized quarterly quizzes to help their advertiser educate their audience on their different initiatives while also collecting opt-ins to grow their email audience. They’ve been now running this campaign for 2 years and counting because of the consistent results the City of Fort Wayne receives! Check out the full case study here!

Rebecca detailed their Amazing Teachers program that they’ve had ongoing for years, as it has brought in huge engagement, leads, and brand awareness for their sponsor, and is now a staple within their community.

She also touched on their organizational Community Choice program, and mentioned that if you are not running a Best Of, you need to start planning one now!

Custom Lead-Gen Campaigns

These are customized promotion campaigns that are tailored to the clients goals and specific needs and are focused on driving leads for that advertiser.

Rebecca shared their Great American Home & Garden Refresh sweepstakes that they created tailored to their advertiser, STIHL. They incorporated national HGTV stars, Dave & Jenny Mars, to boost appeal and further tie in the home improvement angle. Read the full case study here!

Deb explained how they crafted their New Roof & Windows Giveaway to drive leads and band awareness for their client. The sweepstakes was so successful in delivering leads to their client – $120K in new roof installations – that the client increased their annual spend by 700% and opted in to running more promotions with Federated Media!

Go to Market Strategy

While promotions provide a multitude of opportunities, you may not see a huge return unless you craft a fully realized go to market strategy. This is how your training your sales and internal teams to understand and communicate the value proposition of promotions within your sales packages.

The Value Proposition

Bringing together all of your solutions can sometimes be difficult for a sales rep, but a promotion gives them a campaign that can immediately increase their reach because it is bringing a value to your audience while also providing an opportunity to translate that audience into activations. You should make sure all within your team – leadership, fulfillment, sales, etc. – have a firm grasp on the value you are brining to your clients.

• Leads
• Measurable Results
• Zero-Party Data Collection
• Activations
• Reach of Media Company with Omni-Channel Campaign
• Customizable Promotion Schedule for Client Needs/Profit Centers

Training Your Sales Team

Having a trained and confident sales team is really the core of driving revenue with promotions. Focus on:

• Selling results not products​
• Client-first mentality​
• How different promotion types solve client needs​
• Creating valuable sales collateral​
• Align compensation
• Vertical-specific sales decks​
  • Turnkey pricing packages​
  • Score Cards ​

Rebecca’s team curates vertical decks for every main vertical that their teams work with that include proven case studies demonstrating the results those campaigns brought, talking points on the value of promotions, and a fully rounded package that includes promotions AND your other core advertising offers like search, social media, print/on-air, etc.

Deb’s team really focuses on cultivating a client-first mentality and helping their clients reach their specific needs. Their team gravitates towards utilizing sweepstakes and quizzes, and they put effort into making sure their sales team understands the difference between the two. They both generate leads for clients, but sweepstakes are more direct and quizzes are more educational. This means if you have a client who has an initiative, quizzes are instrumental in educating the audience.

Optimizing Your Campaigns

The other side of your strategy should be ensuring each campaign is as successful as possible. Doing that involves training your team on tracking the campaign and providing skills and best practices on what to do if the campaign needs a boost. It also means being transparent with your client and providing them with sharable dashboards so they can track the progress of their campaign as well.

Both Deb and Rebecca implement the strategies below to verify their teams are providing the most successful campaigns possible to their clients:

• Weekly Scorecard & Revenue Opportunities​
• Weekly meetings to review and optimize all live promotions​
• Share results dashboards with clients from launch to end ​
• Monthly company-wide calls to share successes & case studies
• Follow-up sheets to help advertisers capitalize on the promotion results

The Takeaways

Sell Always-On recurring campaigns

• Customized Campaigns over ​One-Offs​
• Annual Planning vs. Transactional Deals

Go to market with your BEST value proposition

• Present the right promotion types to ​solve client needs
• Advertisers want measurable results

Train sales reps to sell results

• Client-first mentality
• Repeatable playbooks

Align compensation

• Pay higher commission
• Specific commission on promotions
• Promotions have a much higher profit margin

Optimize campaigns

• Monitors promotions while they’re live
• Use sharable dashboards for client transparency

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